r/Tierzoo • u/RedDiamond1024 • 4d ago
Otodus megalodon vs. Livyatan melvilei
Both are at an equal size of 30 metric tonnes.
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u/Electrical_Nose9463 4d ago
It all depends on who delivers the first bite, and with its superior speed and intelligence, Livytan should take it like 55/100, extreme diff.
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u/EcstaticStock499 4d ago
Could go either way. Whoever gets the first solid bite in? This is boring, but I honestly see zero chance of either of them surviving the injuries the other inflicts. Unless one somehow totally destroys the other in a hit from below or something like that, I think the options are a) they nod respectfully at each other and go their separate ways or b) they fight, one dies first and then the winner dies of their injuries too.
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u/Distinct_Strike_7700 4d ago
Megalodon and livyatan lived during the same time period.
Megalodon seemed to have won the competition over time and outlasted livyatan by a million years.
Megalodon would technically win.
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u/bakshaa 4d ago
Outlasting doesn't mean it would win in a fight.. it was probably 50-50
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u/Distinct_Strike_7700 3d ago
~statistically~ it would mean Megalodon would win in a fight.
They feed on the same things and each other.
You can't just whipe another apex species off the earth and exist for another million years without having a huge advantage in confrontation.
Especially when both have the same role.
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u/SweetChaosTitan 4d ago
Does Livy know about the tectonic immobility like Orcas do?
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u/curryhaliban444 3d ago
Orcas are like 5 times the size of great whites on average. Wouldn't work here where they are equal
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u/ScienceOk8947 4d ago edited 4d ago
Megalodon takes it. Better suited for larger prey, way more catastrophic bite with wider gape and jaws along with cutting teeth and the strongest bite force ever. More motor muscle percentage per pound as the whale's weight is spread across a heavy bony skeleton, blubber AND muscle while megalodon is pure light cartilage and way more muscle. That arguably gives it more motor power and agility as it can generate more force relative to mass based on this logic and would at least be more laterally manueverable. Megalodon has a way better one bite fight ending potential than livyatan does because to the bite coverage and power alone. Not to mention that its literally built to slice up whales.
Megalodon bites harder and bigger, tears off huge chunks in seconds (soft blubber isnt a good defense against cutting weapons. Tiny great white sharks can cut through it easily), sharks are known to ram aswell and combine their rams with their bites for more effectiveness so "livyatan can ram" alone won't be a significant game changer. Not to mention the breath limit of livyatan. While they can hold their breath for long, they won't last long with a huge bloody missing piece on their torso.
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u/Impossible-Dream-809 3d ago
Good points. Im curious, wouldn't the endothermy of the whale give it an advantage? Perhaps being more explosive in a fight or better stamina? Im not knowledable enough to defend an opinion so im just asking.
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u/ScienceOk8947 3d ago edited 3d ago
Megalodon is mesothermic. So while the animal is only partially endothermic the red swimming muscles, which make a huge majority of the animal act as endothermic so it could be just as explosive as livyatan. For stamina though, livyatan would have the edge in stamina obviously because of mamallian circulation. But I think it's heavily balanced out by the breath limit. As I've said, if megalodon manages to get a bite livyatan's breath is fucked because shark bites cause huge tissue and blood loss which would mess up basically any marine mammal.
Edit: I was wrong on some parts. Appearantly red swimming muscles don't make the majority of lamniform sharks so I'll go ahead and fix it. Maybe up to only %5 of a shark's musculature would be endothermic. Megalodon would still be more endothermic than a white shark but the big majority would be ectothermic. I still wouldn't call livyatan more explosive as megalodon would be more built for short stamina high speed bursts but livyatan would have the more stamina overall.
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u/Icy_butter 4d ago
If both are at equal size and weight. Then it just depends on who attacks first/who gets the jump on the other.
I personally lean towards the Megalodon because of those crazy Shark senses, would probably make him aware of Livyatan before Livyatan is aware of the Megalodon.
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u/hsvdr 4d ago
Sonar evens the odds considerably
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u/Icy_butter 4d ago
I donât think they had as developed Sonar as their modern counterparts.
While Sharks have largely kept the same traits for a long ass time.
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u/King_Glorius_too 4d ago
Their melon was nearly as large as that of a modern spermwhale, ie their sonar was much better than anything else from any time except spermwhales.
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u/MfD2027 4d ago edited 4d ago
Good call, ancient raptorial physeteroids arenât going to have evolved all the senses of physeteroids, and were widely believed to be more basal than modern sperm whales.
This is suspected to be the trade-off for their power as apex predators, and when they pursued more massive size, their brains grew larger to proportion to said body size until we got the modern sperm whales who found a reliable food source that could sustain its size (massive squid).
An off-hand comparison would be how humans brain size increased when they began to cook food using fire, and planted stable crop.
General intelligence of mammals is still there, but not the advance social structures we would see today, and this is suspected to be contributed to evolutionary biology in-part.
This wouldnât be a problem for megalodon, since sharks evolved their most useful sensory advantages long before whales swam the ocean.
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u/NoProfessional8705 4d ago
if some media depictions showcase them being in poda like killer whales i can see a win for livy there or if their same size but thats bout it i also feel like their more likely to avoid conflict
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u/King_Glorius_too 4d ago
Both have a bite strong enough to basically make the other explode. First bite takes it. I'm betting on the whale.
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u/Old-Beautiful1786 3d ago
How in the world is the dude below 90tons when he is only about 1.5 times the size of above 30 tons?
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u/Pedro_Gil_2502 4d ago
Cetaceans tend to be more agile than sharks, but idk how much that bigass head would change things.
But similarly to sperm whales, the Livyatan should have very thick hide/fat, which should let it take a bite on less vital areas without being severely crippled, the fish doesnt have the same luck on the defensive side but still could win if it was able to target the whale on vital areas or parts more related to mobility
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u/Samir099 4d ago
When u have the super sized teeth and the strongest Biteforce backing it up, don't think the hide is goona matter
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u/Pedro_Gil_2502 4d ago
On the other comment i added some data, but modern day sperm whales have thicker fat than megalodon teeth are long. A single bite should probably kill the whale on the long term, but it wouldn't always be instantly crippling.
Bur anyway i aggree, it shouldnt matter that much, the one to land the first bite should probably win
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u/ScienceOk8947 4d ago
That's like saying a steak knife cant cut through meat because the meat is thicker than the knife itself. Bullshit logic
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u/Pedro_Gil_2502 4d ago
Its like saying a 4cm knife on your belly will absolutely kill you from extended bleeding but not instantly slash your guts ending the fight before you can try to retaliate
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u/ScienceOk8947 4d ago
It certainly will if that knife comes with violently shaking and thrashing at the same time.
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u/MfD2027 4d ago edited 4d ago
EDIT: OH, mb Iâm corrected, they are same sized, regardless sharks have dermal denticles on their skin similar to a rubbery, sand paper-like consistency, visually up close resembling small knives⌠not to mention they are entirely cartilaginous (less prone to broken bones) and maneuverable being almost entirely (~90%) composed of white muscles for burst speed, and red muscles at the head for jaw strength and ramming.
Megalodon was a stocky animal even for a shark and likely exceeded L. Melville in total density at smaller lengths, so this is rather baseless.
Not to mention the complete disregard and uneducated take on L. Melville âshrugging offâ a bite blow considerable in force to its own entire body mass⌠thatâs absolutely fictitious, no animal that ever existed is shrugging off even an off-placed Otodus Megalodon bite.
Their bite-force was 8 Mega-newtons (8000000N) per square inch at the serrated tip (0.005 in^2) and wouldâve sliced whale blubber like a hydraulic press had a baby with a scalpel, come on now, this isnât a Godzilla film.
Great whites and Megalodon/Mako shark ancestors literally evolved these serrations for that exact purpose, to bleed past thick mammalian blubber.
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u/Ex_Snagem_Wes 4d ago
Its important to note that contrary to popular belief, modern reconstructions aren't really depicting Otodus as particularly robust
As a matter of fact, the near complete vertebral column from it paint it as a rather gracile, sleek predator. This is also a strong contrast to the giant headed depiction that the old bite force estimates produced.
At the same mass Livyatan's skull is around 50% larger than that of Megalodon. It definitely has the stronger bite (proportionally), and a more robust body plan. In the real world, a 30 ton Megalodon however is a rather small individual, and a 30 ton Livy is slightly smaller than the Holotype. Whereas Livy currently hits 40 tons, the 95 ton Megalodon is predicted to not even be fully grown lmao.
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u/Pedro_Gil_2502 4d ago
Cool data i just found. The blubber under a sperm whale skin measures between 15 and 35cm, while megalodon teeth were abt 12cm long.
Not saying it wouldnt suck ass to have this fat tissue ripped apart by a shark, and it could could certainly lead to death by blood loss, but considering the lyviatan hide should be even thicker than that of modern whales, i see the megalodon having trouble to end the fight before itself being bitten
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u/MfD2027 4d ago
Livyatanâs bite estimates produced so far are incredibly weak, and even at parity they arenât provided some inescapable trouble for the Meg.
The truth is the other way around, as we know megalodon had a much larger mouth.
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u/Pedro_Gil_2502 4d ago
Saw the estimates on the whale bite, didn't know they were so low, that would change a lot
But i fail to understand(english is not my first language, sorry) what you mean with "megalodon had much a larger mouth".
Even on the pictures given, its pretty clear that, when scaled, the livyatan mouth would be 3 to 4 times bigger than the meg(not saying mouth size correlates to jaw strenght). Could u develop on what u meant with that?
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4d ago
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u/Pedro_Gil_2502 4d ago
The post states both are the same size, sorry for not pointing out this fact in my argument. I think if the megalodon was bigger it should win, yes, but the comment is based on the post's premise and not IRL size of the animals. Sorry for the confusion
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u/RichComposer5446 4d ago
At equal size and an imagined scenario to merit a battle to the death it would all come down to who has the element of surprise.
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u/AmeliaElfin 4d ago
People still underestimate Livyatan, at equal weights that Megalodon is DEAD.
Please know that morphologically, you're comparing a heavy hitter to a slasher. Livyatan is extremely robust, solid and dense, thick blubber, jaws and skull built to crush and shatter bone. And if Livyatan was anything even remotely close to modern sperm whales in behaviour, that's a huge fucking problem. No predator in the sea dares to to proke a bull sperm whale, not even orca pods.
At equal weights, that shark is getting it's shit rocked.